The last weekend of October, I got to learn much about New York City lifestyle history by going to three Manhattan museums for a project I had to do for my Discover New York (DNY) class. I went to the Tenement, Merchant, and Frick museums, where I saw firsthand the living conditions of the poor, middle class, and wealthy inhabitants of New York in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Touring these very different dwellings, I noticed major differences in terms of space, climate, furnishings, and responsibilities those living there would have had. The most notable disparity I saw was in how the different classes obtained water; in the tenements, people had to struggle to carry buckets of water up to their apartments, while those in the merchant house had a pump bring it in to the kitchen, and the Fricks could sit and relax by an extravagant fountain with running water in indoor Garden Court.
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| The outside of the Tenement Museum, located on Orchard Street |
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| The front of the Merchant Museum, located on East 4th Street |
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| Me outside the gate of the Frick Museum, located on East 70th Street |
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